While reading about Game Theory earlier this evening, I came across this evil little Flash game called Pearls Before Swine.

The game seemed simple enough. There are multiple rows of pearls laid out on a table before you (the swine, heh)... something like this:

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You and the computer alternately take one or more pearls from a row. The one who is forced to take the last pearl is the loser.

Piece of cake, right? That's what I thought 2 hours ago.

Level 1, which has two rows of pearls, was easy. But when a new row was added in level 2, I started losing game after game. At first, I tried to analyze the patterns and think through it rationally. But after 1 whole hour of constant losing, all strategy went out the window, and I found myself clicking randomly. After another 20 minutes or so, I somehow got lucky and beat level 2, but I wasn't any closer to figuring out the solution.

Level 3 added a lot more pearls, and I again lost every time. I couldn't believe it. I can do this! I'm smart! I can beat this stupid game! There has to be a simple solution! Argh! I want to kill some small animals! Where can I find some small animals?

2 hours and hundreds of games later, I finally gave up and Googled for the solution. Turned out that it was a variation of a classic game called Nim.

And no, there's no simple solution. It took my battered brain another 30 minutes to finally understand it. Overall, this was quite a humbling experience.

Now, I want all of you to suffer the way I did. Go play the game. And don't cheat!